VVV survey microlensing events; -3.7<b<3.9{deg}

The new search is made across VVV tiles b291, b305, b319, b347, b361, and b375, covering a total area of about 11.5deg^2^. We find a total of N=238 new microlensing events in this new area, N=74, which are classified as bulge red clump (RC) giant sources.

Combining them with N=122 events that we had previously reported in the Galactic center (VVV tile b333), allows us to study the latitude distribution of the microlensing events reaching the Galactic plane at b=00 for the first time. We find a very strong dependence of the number of microlensing events with Galactic latitude, a number that increases rapidly toward the Galactic center by one order of magnitude from |b|=2{deg} to b=0{deg} with a much steeper gradient than with Galactic longitude.